Tell me a way your superego reacts to the practice of worship
Worship involves learning to listen and feel into silence or stillness, especially in the heart. Ego/superego blocks us, distracts us. Doubts, unworthiness, confusion, beliefs based on our history or experience of church. Ego and superego resist vulnerability. It wants an operating manual and it wants things fixed.
What is stillness in the heart. It is a kind of emptiness, a lack of reactivity, an openness that allows a space of receptivity and sensitivity. First we may feel deadness, numbness , emotional turmoil, dissociation into the head, distraction. Or we may feel drawn into the stillness and discover the desire of the heart to worship. Inevitably we will have to contend with the grasping, avoiding, deadening nature of our emotional heart. It is territory we have to traverse with patience and compassion. This clarifying or purifying of the heart transforms it from being a center of emotions into the organ of sensitivity and receptivity that is capable of knowing the silence.
Explore what opens you into silence/stillness in the heart and what blocks that opening? What does your heart feel like right now?
Worship involves learning to listen and feel into silence or stillness, especially in the heart. Ego/superego blocks us, distracts us. Doubts, unworthiness, confusion, beliefs based on our history or experience of church. Ego and superego resist vulnerability. It wants an operating manual and it wants things fixed.
What is stillness in the heart. It is a kind of emptiness, a lack of reactivity, an openness that allows a space of receptivity and sensitivity. First we may feel deadness, numbness , emotional turmoil, dissociation into the head, distraction. Or we may feel drawn into the stillness and discover the desire of the heart to worship. Inevitably we will have to contend with the grasping, avoiding, deadening nature of our emotional heart. It is territory we have to traverse with patience and compassion. This clarifying or purifying of the heart transforms it from being a center of emotions into the organ of sensitivity and receptivity that is capable of knowing the silence.
Explore what opens you into silence/stillness in the heart and what blocks that opening? What does your heart feel like right now?
We will be holding our Contemplative Worship Service this coming Monday, February 3rd from 7.30-9.00pm.
You may begin to notice hopes and expectations arise.Perhaps you had a lovely time during our previous service. You may notice fantasies about how you want it go next time. You may notice expectations. Welcome to the grasping emotional heart! This is almost inevitable. No worship service is the same. Practicing presence allows us to return to our experience in the now, noticing all the grasping, all the judgements, sensing ourselves into our feet and belly. By allowing and by holding our experience we can rest. This is the doorway.
Or perhaps you had a miserable time and you believe that you will always be cut off. This too is a grasping. We are grasping at our fixed self, convinced that we know what will happen and beset by the attacks of the superego. It is important to recognize the superego and push it away. We may also have to untangle many beliefs and ideas we hold about worship. These beliefs come from what we learned as a children. But they also include deep seated confusions about the languaging of worship. What does God, Lord mean? Are we worthy of being blessed, of being the beloved of the beloved?
By the way the author of the longer reading was Rumi.
Looks like we may warm up a bit. Don't fall, stay warm. Hope to see you next Monday
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